food for thought - review

Whenever I see out-of-town families and couples alike seated in the window booths of a depressing Garfunkel’s, a desperate Angus Aberdeen Steakhouse or a dejected Frankie and Benny’s, all strategically situated in the tourist hotspots of London town to coax over-stimulated and disorientated visitors into their dull and uninspiring interiors by means of familiarity in both brand and menu, my being gives way to a full body shudder.

These faces often read despair – mine would too if I had just paid £10 for southern fried chicken strips slightly more moist than cardboard but with the same flavour. Leicester Square, Covent Garden, Charing Cross Road, Oxford Street are just a few of the areas littered with these and other equally vapid excuses for eateries – the footfall fodder of the culinary world. 

It is only the threat of police intervention that stops me from marching into these establishments, throwing Dad’s tough-as-old-boots steak to the ground, grabbing Mum by the shoulders in front of wide-eyed children frozen mid face-stuff with limp and greasy chips in their hands, screaming ‘But why? WHY are you here?! There are so many, SO many better places to eat than here. You’re in London - one of the culinary capitals of the world! Take a side street, venture into the realms of a new cuisine, an unfamiliar name above the door. You never know, you might ENJOY it’.

that most incredible aubergine dish

But I do understand that it must be hard to resist the calls from such establishments when you’ve been on your feet all day, the kids are hungry and whining, and you only have one hour before the show starts. 

There isn’t really time to wander round, working out where might be good or different that won’t blow the bank. This is central London after all - everything here must be expensive unless it’s a McDonald’s or Subway, right? Wrong. 

I introduce to you somewhere slap bang in the middle of Covent Garden, where you don’t need to book a table, where the food is both healthy and off the scale delicious, where they welcome BYO with no corkage charge (one for you Mums and Dads), and where you can fill your boots for under £8 per head. I present to you, Food for Thought.

inside Food for Thought

My regular London Cheap Eats companion (Aarti) suggested we try this place to see if it would make the grade in the form of a blog entry. It’s a place I’ve failed to notice or hear about before, yet after some research it turns out it’s been reviewed highly and has been established in the same location for around 40 years. I’m already excited.  

Food for Thought is an eatery where the focus is on fresh food and a friendly service – ‘simple decor of pine tables, stools and whitewashed walls, enlivened by original artwork’. It’s also located in an 18^th century listed building where the low seating alcoves were once used for ripening bananas, apparently. 

The menu is vegetarian (don’t wince – this is at absolutely no detriment to any flavour let me assure you), changes daily (while the prices stay the same) and is as fresh as it gets. The format is a two floored establishment – the ground floor has a few window stools and a take-away service counter while down the stairs you’ll find the main seating area, still cosy in its proportions. 

Once the stairs have been descended, you take a look at the menu and order what you fancy, pay with cash, then take a seat. You may well end up sharing a table as you cosy on up with your neighbour, but who cares. We felt it all added to the charm and atmosphere of the place.

Both myself and Aarti ordered the same hot dish out of three options (all options £5) – it was soft baked aubergine with chunky slices of fennel, courgettes, and puy lentils, coated in a wonderful yoghurt and dill sauce, topped with large croutons intense with the flavour of olives, with melted and then hardened savoury bites of cheese. 

I can’t tell you how completely gorgeous this was – all I was reading from it was the love, effort and consideration that had been put into both the design of this dish, and its execution. I am determined to replicate it at home. And I was almost certain I didn’t even like fennel – I'm not so certain now. I would take a tube ride from Clapham Common to Covent Garden after a long day at work just to eat this aubergine dish, it was that good. 

On the day of writing this up, some of the ‘hot dishes’ options include Jamaican black bean pot in a medium spicy coconut and tomato sauce, and butter bean and asparagus primavera in a yoghurt and sour cream sauce. These both read as things I would happily devour. And don’t forget this menu changes every day – what joy.

With my aubergine dish I intended to order a couple of slices of the freshly baked bread which was mushroom and sage on the day we visited, but they had alas run out. I can only imagine it was equally superb – must get there earlier next time. Instead I ordered a bowl of brown rice (£1.20) and a portion of Greek yoghurt (30p) to accompany my main. 

Interestingly enough, the yoghurt was not charged for and the rice was only charged at £1, different to what the menu stated. I of course was not complaining. Also available on the menu is the soup of the day, quiches of the day, an array of homemade salads, a daily evening special, brownies, flapjacks, desserts and scones. And the scones are certainly something to write home about. 

My companion opted for that day’s savoury scone (£1.80) to accompany her aubergine, one with rosemary and cheese. I chose to have their other scone offering as a dessert, a fresh strawberry scone (£1.80). Both were almost the size of a side plate on their own and in particular, the latter was completely sublime. Buttery but light, not too sweet, a wonderful melt-in-the-mouth texture, and punctuated with fresh strawberries.

a quite wonderful fresh strawberry scone

Glass tumblers are continuously washed and placed on a drainer by a member of staff behind a large sink and are used for both the table water already present and any BYO that may have accompanied you. 

The food is served in and on quite lovely and weighty earthenware crockery.  We arrived at about 18.15 and had to hover around the ordering counter for just a handful of minutes before a couple of stools made themselves available - tables cannot be reserved. As time moved on, the seats started to empty out further, with a little flurry of clientèle just before last orders at 20.00. 

After devouring our hearty and life-affirming meals, swiftly emptying a bottle of very drinkable Beaujolais purchased from the M&S round the corner, and enjoying great conversation, my companion and I were quite far beyond the realms of mere satiety and were positively basking in the after-glow of a fantastic meal that barely brushed past our purses. The guilt of our consciences foreseeing the imminent descent into cocktails was at least slightly abated by the goodness that lined our stomachs and with bellies full, our night was yet young.

Next time you are in town for shopping, a show, seeing the sights or simply with an agenda to meander, I strongly urge you to try out Food for Thought. I have no doubts you will thoroughly enjoy it and return for more, as will I.

Liked lots - food, atmosphere, location, clientèle, staff, price, BYO, almost everything
Liked less - they had run out of incredible sounding bread - sad face :(
Good for - couples - wait for a private corner to free up, take in a bottle of wine and get cosy; spontaneity - no need to book a table; small groups; students; catching up; vegetarians and meat-eaters alike; hippies; the gut; the wallet

The bill

Me 

aubergine & yoghurt bake £5.00

brown rice £1.20 (but was charged £1.00)

fresh strawberry scone £1.80

Total £8.00*

*NB Also ordered Greek yoghurt £0.30 (but was not charged)

Aarti
aubergine & yoghurt bake £5.00

rosemary and cheese scone £1.80

Total £6.80

Afiyet olsun.

fat-free creamy beetroot and thyme dip

There are few ingredients that have as intense a colour as the deep flesh of beetroot. Combine purple with the white of quark and you'll end up with a bowl full of colour and goodness that will brighten up any spread.

This dip combines the earthiness of beetroot with the sweetness from soft roast garlic but the clinching flavour here has got to be the thyme. When wazzed up with the cream cheese, you'll be left with a sin-free thick and creamy dip that goes with almost anything. I keep a bowl of this in the fridge as often as possible and have it as a side with a range of dishes from fish pie, to left over pizza, to spreading it on toast and topping it with sardines. An all round winner - I am yet to introduce it to someone who hasn't fallen for it.

Quark
If you haven't heard of quark before, it's time to get acquainted. Meaning “curd” in Slavic, quark is a soft, white and un-aged cheese made from whey. It has a much lower fat content than other cream cheeses (99.8% fat-free) and is popular in Scandanavia and Eastern Europe. Where a dish requires a voluptuous creaminess, I often use quark in place of higher fat alternatives. It both cooks well and is also excellent used in desserts. Best of all, you'll find it in all the standard supermarkets.

Fat free creamy beetroot and thyme dip

250g quark
3 x medium beetroots
4 x garlic cloves
small bunch of thyme
salt and pepper
olive oil

Pre-heat your oven to 180C (fan). Place the beetroot (whole) and garlic cloves in an oven dish and drizzle a little olive oil to coat. Seal the dish with tin foil and place in the oven until the beetroot is soft and can be pierced to the centre with a knife.

Tip Be sure to put the beetroot in whole. If you chop them up their juices will bleed during cooking.

Tip Take the garlic cloves out as soon as they're soft - they'll be done some time before the beetroot. If you leave them in too long, they'll go hard and brown.

Remove from the oven and allow to cool. When they're cool enough to habdle, peel off the skins - there's no need for a peeler as they'll come away in your fingers. Quarter the beetroots and squeeze out the garlic from their skins. Put them in a food processor along with the quark and the leaves from a good few sprigs of thyme. Season with salt and pepper and wazz. Be sure to taste the dip and season further as you wish - you may want more thyme or more seasoning. Spoon into a serving bowl and top with a few more thyme leaves.

Alfiyet olsun.

ricotta dumplings

There are few things that remind me more of how much I love Italian food than the perfectly complimenting aromas from gently frying garlic, cooking canned tomatoes and torn basil leaves. Representing the colours of the Italian flag, these ingredients are some of the key vertebrae that make up the backbone of this cuisine and once my senses have clocked their presence, the anticipation of what delights will follow is almost frantic.

Italian cuisine is generally very simple, allowing quality ingredients to steal the limelight rather than dulling their impact with too much fuss. Despite this simplicity, it’s incredible just how many restaurants manage to get it wrong. Notice my restaurant review page – there isn’t a single Italian venue on there. I am yet to eat at a really good quality Italian restaurant in London that can be compared to the pastas and pizzas I’ve been fortunate enough to savour in Naples (so the bar is set pretty high). It’s relatively easy to quickly tot-up a hit-list of quality French restaurants (often high-end), or really good and reasonably priced Asian venues, for example. But finding an authentic trattoria that stays true to the food and uses quality fresh ingredients with everything homemade (including the mozzarella – it’s best eaten the day it’s made and it only takes a few hours to make from scratch), seems to be an impossible task. Perhaps I’m not looking in the right places – if anyone does have recommendations for excellent Italians in London, please share them.

Genarro Contaldo and Antonio Carluccio

In the meantime, it’s necessary to make Italian food at home. And that’s no bad thing. In my opinion there’s no better inspiration than the dishes cooked from The Two Greedy Italians series starring Gennaro Contaldo and Antonio Carluccio – two clearly very close friends and evangelists of the cuisine. The passion and love they have for their food, the humour they use and the genuine chemistry between them on the screen is both completely inspiring and heart-warming. I honestly don’t think there’s a better cookery show on the box, and I watch a lot of them. Consequently, I have the recipe books from each of the two series and for a quick and simple meal, I opted for the ricotta dumplings. The slightly sweet cheese and tangy tomatoes combined with the yielding plumpness of the light dumplings and aromas from the garlic and basil present to you a plate of nothing other than comfort and delight. Fight these grey May skies and open your home to the tastes from the Amalfi coast.

Ricotta Dumplings

‘These little dumplings, made from a few staple Italian larder ingredients, are traditionally made in my home village of Minori on the feast day of the town’s patron saint’ – Gennaro Contaldo

For the dumplings
200g 00 flour, plus extra for dusting
225g ricotta
3 free-range egg yolks
30g freshly grated parmesan
Pinch freshly grated nutmeg
Salt and black pepper

Tip 00 flour is very fine flour and is typically used when making pasta. You shouldn't have a problem finding it in the supermarket.

For the sauce
6 tbsp olive oil
3 garlic cloves, peeled, cut into thick slices
1 chilli, sliced
2 x 400g tinned plum tomatoes, each tomato chopped in half
Few basil leaves

Mix the flour, ricotta, egg yolks, Parmesan, nutmeg and seasoning together in a large bowl to form a soft, moist dough. Tip the mixture out onto a floured work surface and knead for 3-5 minutes. Roll the dough into a long, thin sausage shape, then cut into dumplings about 2cm/1in long. Cook the dumplings for 3-4 minutes in a large saucepan of salted boiling water.

Meanwhile for the sauce, heat the olive oil in a frying pan and fry the garlic and chilli for one minute, then add the plum tomatoes. Bring to the boil and simmer for five minutes. Turn the heat off and stir in some of the torn basil leaves. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Remove the dumplings from the pan with a slotted spoon and mix them in with the tomato sauce. To serve, spoon the dumplings onto a warmed serving plate and sprinkle over the remaining basil leaves.

Alfiyet olsun.

watercress soup

I’m a big advocate of seasonal ingredients. If the cyclical forces of nature inhibit produce growth, then it probably shouldn’t be growing at that time of year. And by proxy, you will experience far less pleasure consuming it than if you did at its peak. Have you ever tried to buy a fresh tomato in January? They’ll be insipid to the point of translucent unless they’ve been freighted in from the tropics or somewhere equally absurd. If you want tomatoes in January, do what the Italians do and use quality canned tomatoes or passata where the flavours of the summer bounty have been bottled and preserved.

When you do manage to get your hands on produce fresh and slap bang in the middle of its seasonal best, there is often little if anything you need to do to it or add to it to fully appreciate what it has to offer. A great example is this soup that Matt makes where the star ingredient is watercress, currently in its prime. It takes almost no time to knock up and contains the most minimal of ingredients – not even any stock. Yet the flavour from it is so fresh and vibrant and lively with the natural peppery hit from the leaves that it’s down as one of my favourite soups.

Good for both the body and the soul, I present to you spring in a bowl.

Watercress Soup

Serves 2

1/4 onion, diced
200g watercress
50g spinach
180ml boiling water
180g ice
Salt and pepper
Small knob of unsalted butter

Soften the onion in the butter until translucent. Add the watercress and spinach and toss them in the pan for one minute. Add the boiling water, bring up to the boil and boil for 2 minutes - push the leaves under the surface of the water during this time. Remove the pan from the heat and add the ice.

Tip The use of ice prevents the leaves from overcooking (thus retaining their nutrients) and preserves the vibrant colour of the leaves.

Stir until the ice has melted. Season with salt and pepper to taste – don’t use too much pepper as watercress is naturally peppery. Use a stick blender or transfer the contents to a food processor and blitz until smooth. Reheat to piping hot when ready to serve and decant into warm bowls.

Serve with a topping of your choice – a quenelle (neat looking spoonful - ask Masterchef) of crème fraîche, quark, Greek yoghurt, or a grating of parmesan. Don’t forget a couple of slices of good quality sourdough. A perfect Spring lunch in no time.

Alfiyet olsun.

colliers wood turkish restaurant - review

mitite köfte - minced lamb prepared with chopped onions,
fresh herbs and garlic, covered with a secret recipe sauce

If a Turkish restaurant opens up on my doorstep, it's inevitable I'm going to check it out. Even if it has taken over the spot of a previously unsuccessful and poorly reviewed Indian and not changed the decor, at all. We're talking huge revolving chandeliers, purple walls and damask wallpaper along with gold dado, and lilac faux silk string curtains. Direct your senses past the kitsch and they'll soon be met with the aromas of fresh meat hitting a hot charcoal grill (mangal) permeating throughout the venue. Sure, the bar could be a set from a Bollywood b-movie, but who cares when the food you are eating and the service you receive is very good indeed.

Matt and I decided to try out Istanbul Meze Mangal on a Thursday evening. The owners clearly left their creativity back in Turkey when coming up with the name, but what they lack in imagination and interior design, they more than make up for in food. For starters we delved into the world of the savoury Turkish pastry - in my opinion one of the best offerings from the cuisine. We ordered sigara böreği (cigar shaped pastry encasing creamy Turkish white cheese - £3.95) and patlıcan kızartma (fried aubergines and green peppers with a creamy yoghurt and tomato sauce - £4.50). The pastries were fresh, crisp and light and encasing a good amount of cheese with hints of mint. The aubergine whilst fried was not greasy, accompanied by oven roasted cherry tomatoes, and embraced by a completely delightful tomato and yoghurt sauce which we guessed was their sauce for the Iskender kebab. Both plates were slashed with lines of pesto which has no place on a Turkish plate, but I suspect this was an attempt to make them look artistic and I'm more than happy to let a courageous, if misguided, lean towards haute cuisine slide.

sigara böreği - cigar shaped filo pastry
encasing crumbly white cheese

patlıcan kızartma - fried aubergines in a
yoghurt and tomato sauce

For mains Matt ordered the yogurtlu adana köfte (£10.95) - one of my favourite types of kebab. This comes with a layer of bread with a yoghurt sauce (similar to the Iskender sauce mentioned above, but without the tomato). If the sauce is right and the meat is good, it's difficult for this dish to go wrong and it's why it's one of my all time kebabs - this place did not disappoint. The sauce was exceptionally creamy and flavoursome and whilst the köfte had the odd small nugget of gristle that had to be removed from the mouth, the flavour was top notch. I ordered the mitite köfte (£8.50), not something I've heard of before but the menu description was flirtatious enough for me to firmly place my finger on it - minced lamb prepared with chopped onions, fresh herbs and garlic, covered with a secret recipe sauce. Secret recipe sauce, you say? Hit me.

Turns out this secret sauce rendered these köftes some of the best I've ever had the pleasure of encountering - a crisp and beautifully flavoured casing with soft and succulent middles, seasoned with herbs. I attempted to decipher the components of this secret sauce but my brain soon gave up once it realised the task was detracting from fully savouring the pleasures of the flavour and texture. When I'm 'Mmmmm'-ing after every mouthful, you know it's something good.

Iskender kebab - served with a layer
of bread and a tomato and yoghurt sauce

warm Turkish bread

We were offered 'garlic sauce or chilli sauce?' and whilst I was almost expecting a large plastic burger joint squeezy bottle of both (as you would expect from a standard take-away kebab house at 2am on a Friday night), we were in fact presented with two small pots of home made sauces. Very pleasingly, the garlic sauce was not garlic sauce at all, it was cacık (the Turkish version of the more widely recognised Greek tzatziki), and the second pot was full of chillies chopped up with seasoning and a tomato sauce (I think). I wonder if they were introduced as 'garlic sauce, chilli sauce' to help those not au fait with the full repertoir of Turkish cuisine to relate to. The table next to us had a young couple who ordered doner with chips. Chips?! Why have chips when this place serves delicious warm and fresh Turkish bread! No Turk would eat their kebab with chips. But these guys were not Turkish and there is so much more to doner or shish in this cuisine that much of the people of Britain have not yet had the opportunity to recognise. Istanbul Meze Mangal focusses on kebabs (of which there is a huge spectrum) and does it very well. But the Turkish cuisine stretches far beyond this - perhaps the couple saw this venue as a peg higher than eating the food from your standard take-away kebab joint in your car - here you can do so at a glass table and with linen napkins.

If you venture into a proper Turkish restaurant that has a menu where half of the contents you've perhaps not heard of before, I urge you to order one of these items. It will most likely be a more authentically Turkish dish that will help you to discover the full range of what this country has to offer. And it's worth taking note, kebabs are just the start of it. But it is a good place to start, none-the-less. And if you're in the SW London neck of the woods, this place is up there with the best to sample them. Turns out you don't need to live in Harringay to eat good Turkish food in London. I think I may have found my new local.

Liked lots - food, staff, incredible koftes, freshly made bread, outside space for warm days
Liked less - the decor
Good for - big parties, eating good Turkish food outside of North London

Alfiyet olsun.

This review can also be found on the Your Local Guardian website.

pepparkakor - swedish ginger thins

If you've ever stepped into a supermarket in Sweden (the food section in your local Ikea will provide the next best alternative, albeit possibly with equine occupation) you may know about pepparkakor. 

If the name doesn't ring a bell, the description may - very thin and very crisp dark spiced biscuits, also known as ginger thins or ginger snaps. I picked up a couple of boxes when visiting Stockholm over Easter, one for home and one to take to work for colleagues. Turns out I ate most of both boxes as it's almost impossible to dull the come hither tones of their unique texture and mildly fiery flavour. 

They're not like any other biscuit I've encountered - incredibly light and completely void of moisture lending to their unmistakable crispness. And those who did get a chance to dip in a paw before I managed to scoff the contents of both boxes thoroughly enjoyed them for the same reasons.

Short of having to drive to Ikea in Croydon every time I wish to replenish the stock (which has long since dwindled to a painful pepparkakor void), I soon realised the only solution would be to find a recipe and make them (regularly) myself. 

After quite a bit of research, it turns out achieving the signature snap is a challenge. There are online stories of bakers making dozens of batches with varying degrees of ingredients, still unable to claim victory over the elusive and unique texture. Suggestions involve excluding any fat whatsoever in order to remove all moisture. Others say bake for longer at a lower temperature. Further advice speaks of using very strong and unfamiliar raising agents for the tough dough.

Well, I found a recipe and a process that read right to me. I tried it, and I nailed it first time. If you want to achieve the same texture and flavour as those boxed Swedish thins, use this recipe.

This recipe is from Cook's Illustrated Magazine (November 2011) and is an absolute corker. It is also incredibly quick and easy to make the dough - the majority of your time will be spent rolling and cutting out the individual biscuits. 

The recipe suggests this makes about 80 biscuits but I've ended up with double - I suspect I've rolled the dough half as thin as the recipe has. So  if you do in fact want 80, I would half the below ingredients. Or you'll end up with 160 biscuits filling up two large Tupperware boxes. Not a bad situation to be in, in my opinion. Keep them airtight and they'll last you for as long as two people with an average biscuit intake would need to eat them.

Pepparkakor

Makes 80 (or around 160 very thin ones as in the pictures)
2 1/2 cups plain flour

2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

1/2 tsp salt

170g unsalted butter

4 tbsp ground ginger

2 tsp ground cinnamon

1/2 tsp ground cloves

1/4 tsp pepper

Pinch cayenne

1 1/4 cups packed dark brown soft sugar

1/4 cup molasses or black treacle

1 large egg plus 1 large yolk

Mix the flour, bicarbonate of soda and salt together in bowl. In the meantime, heat the butter in a pan over a medium heat until melted. Lower the heat to medium-low and continue to cook, swirling the pan frequently, until the foaming subsides and the butter is just beginning to brown. Turn off the heat.

Whisk in all the spices and then add the brown sugar and molasses to the butter mixture and whisk to combine until the sugar has melted and you have a smooth mixture. Add the egg and yolk and mix again with the whisk to combine. You should have a dark, sticky, smooth and glossy mixture.

Pour this mixture into your bowl of flour and combine with a spatula until you have a dough - don't over work it. Cover the bowl with cling film and keep in the fridge for the butter to firm, at least an hour.

Adjust your oven racks to upper-middle and lower-middle positions and heat the oven to 130C (fan). Line two baking trays with non-stick baking paper or silicone paper. Break off a portion of the dough and with your hands mound into a round and squash down. Take a rolling pin and slowly roll it out - if the edges are dry and crack, smooth them out with your fingers and continue rolling slowly. If any of the dough sticks to your rolling pin, just reverse the roll to remove it and join it back to the main mass. 

Roll them about as thin as 1mm - don't worry, they do rise a little in the oven. Use a small cookie cutter to cut out your shapes. Carefully lift each biscuit and place on your baking trays - leave a slight gap between each as they do expand slightly. You will fit about twenty per baking tray. Gather up the remaining dough and join with the rest of the mass. Break off another portion and repeat the process until all your dough is used up.

Place one tray on the upper rack and while it's baking, roll out and fill up your next tray. After 15 minutes or so, transfer the partially baked top tray to the lower rack and rotate 180 degrees. Place your second tray of biscuits on the upper rack. When your first tray is done, remove from the oven and transfer each biscuit to a cooling rack. Bring the top tray down to the bottom shelf, and continue this rotation until you've cooked all your biscuits. The biscuits are done when they are hard to touch and just darkening around the edges - around 15-20 minutes.

Tip The dough can be refrigerated for up to two days or frozen for up to one month if you want to get ahead. Let the dough stand at room temperature for 30 minutes before shaping. Let frozen dough thaw overnight before proceeding with the recipe. 

Settle down on a comfy arm chair in the evening with half a dozen thins, a glass of cold milk and a good read. I'm sold. 

Afiyet olsun.